We are going to help you realize the brutal truth. You are perpetually wrong.

Monday, December 31, 2007

The Assassins

Oh lawdy, it's my first post! And I'm gonna use it to tell you about Assassins.

No.

Wrong again.

Ah, there we go. Assassins is a comic from the wonderful experiment that was the Amalgam Comics brand. DC and Marvel thought "Well, people love Batman, and people love Wolverine. Why don't we just mix them together?!" and a splendid combination on par with Bacon and Asbestos was born.

Amalgam spawned hordes of characters such as the menacing Dark Claw, the horrifying Bat-Thing, the brutal Thorion and Lobo the fucking Duck. Alas, I digress, for today I'm focusing on Assassins. I promise I will cover more Amalgam stories in future posts.

The issue opens up with Dare(The combination of Daredevil and Deathstroke) and Catsai (The combination of Catwoman and Elektra) slaughtering the poor combination of Deadshot and Bullseye, Deadeye in his only appearance in an Amalgam comic ever. Which is a shame because I fucking love me some Deadshot. First I would like to bring to your attention Catsai's costuming choice.

Her actual costume is, well shitty, but it's the 90's so you gotta roll with the punches. However, what in Satan's unholy asshole is she wearing over it? Is it a forcefield? Is it some sort of magic ectoplasm? Is it Amalgamated D.K.? Regardless, it's pretty retarded, which is par for the course in this book.

This is also the first time you've seen a scan I had to do. My scanner is awful, so suck it up, read it and go blind in the process.

That's our villain, boys and girls. The combination of the Riddler and Wilson Fisk aka Kingpin. And yes, he does call himself The Big Question, which is easily one of the best/worst names in comic history. He's luring our vaguely lesbianic duo up Arkham Tower, which was built on the remains of Arkham Asylum. Now, New Gotham City has the most ruthless city government ever apparently, because instead of moving the inmates to a new Asylum they just locked them the fuck up in the tower. Yes, they essentially created a 100+ story deathtrap for anyone who wanders in. I would absolutely love to sit in on that meeting. "So, Mr. Dent, your request for the Arkham Asylum's destruction and the construction of Arkham Tower were passed. What do you want to do with the inmates? We have buses ready to transport them. Nah, fuck that nonsense, let's just lock 'em up. What? Yeah, let's just lock throw them in the tower, lock the doors and let god sort it out. Worked for Australia."

(This is where we lose our key Australian demographic.)

The Wonder Twins fight the combination of Kraven the Hunter and er..Cheetah, I guess? I don't even know. He throws some knives at them which The omnipotent narrator calls Hunga-Munga Blades. Which Wikipedia says is an actual weapon. The more you know.

Now we run into one Jimmy Urich who is a OH SWEET MARY MOTHER OF GOD

Who the hell let that beast out of the house that morning? Furthermore, who wears a bowtie with anything other than a tuxedo ever? Yes, I know that's Jimmy's thing however, he's grown out of it and look where he is now, in a disastrous company-wide crossover. Good on ya, Jimmy! (PLEASE COME BACK AUSSIES WE NEED YOU) Also, how the fuck is he a news anchor? Aren't they generally, y'know, all pretty like? If my local news starred Bow-tied gingers I would watch it even less than I already do.

BACK TO TOPIC

Our girls stab there way through hordes of unnamed crazies until we get the shocking revelation that Dare's horns and powers were provided by Fisk!

He has a riddle for every situation. Every single damn one. Yes, even that one.

The gals have a run-in with an Amalgamation of Cable and Vigilante, I think, because you can't have a 90's comic without some Cable. They finally get to Mr. Fisk, who reveals that he hired them to kill him, because either they kill him and he dies fighting, not Strangefate's puppet, or he kills them and gets his rep back. Unless people think that Strangefate just planned it all you fucking idiot. Catsai channels Ackbar and discovers it's a trap, and Dare charges the shiny fat man.

Whoops. Bad call, hornhead. She gets her horns ripped out and they leak some kind of yellow goo. I can only assume that she stored this goo in her horns for later use when she was banging dudes. The result would be one freaked the fuck out dude and one amused Dare. She seemingly dies from her wounds and Catsai is nowhere to be seen. Then one of her cats sets a bomb and injures Fisk.

Let me repeat that.

One of her cats sets a damn explosive charge with it's cute widdle paws and blows him the fuck up. He survives, but is then stabbed and left hanging by his feet outside his window for Mr. Jimmy Ohgodkillit to find and put on the front page.

Now for my favorite part of the issue, the letter page.

Y'see, Amalgam's schtick was that it was a fake company that we were supposed to believe had been around as long as Marvel and DC have today. Meaning they had to have fanmail, but alas, they had no fans. Thus the writers had to write letters to themselves by fake fans about fake issues and fake stories. This amuses me to no end. The crowning achievement is in an issue of Dark Claw that I have lying around here somewhere that I'll show you eventually.